Presentation of websites to a computer user

ABSTRACT

A method, computer readable storage medium, computer program product and a service. A profile of a computer user is obtained that contains meta tags descriptive of the participants of a first social networking website. A second social networking website having meta tags is selected. A profile from the second social networking website is selected. The meta tags of the first and second social networking websites are compared to determine if there is a match of at least one meta tag. Then, a search is made for related websites having at least one meta tag that matches the at least one meta tag. A list of the related websites is then presented to the computer user.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a method of intelligently presentingrelevant websites to a computer user who is interested in retrievinginformation from the internet.

In an increasingly networked world, computer users frequently use onlineresources to access information. For example, search engines are apopular tool through which computer users enter a search querydescribing information of interest and receive back documents or linksto documents that relate to the search query. Search engines may betailored to a particular area of interest, such as a general web searchengine, a news search engine, or a shopping search engine.

When a user requests information from Internet resources such as theWorld Wide Web, the computer user's browsing experience may bepersonalized in accordance with certain characteristics, preferences andinterests (for example), which are peculiar to the computer user. Suchcharacteristics, preferences and interests may be stored in a userprofile.

Of particular interest to many computer users today are socialnetworking websites which focus on building online communities of peoplewho share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploringthe interests and activities of others. Social networking has creatednew ways to communicate and share information. Social networkingwebsites have information that you have posted about yourself and youractivities and interests or that others have posted about you. Socialnetworking websites are being used regularly by millions of people, andit now seems that social networking will be an enduring part of everydaylife. Popular social networking sites include MySpace and Facebook butsocial networking sites also include applications for business, medicaland the social good.

Social networking services allow users to create a profile forthemselves which can be shared with other like-minded users.

An important part of internet searching are metatags (sometimes alsocalled just “tags”), often invisible to the casual computer user, whichare keywords or terms assigned to a piece of information and allow it tobe found on the internet by browsing or searching.

McCullough U.S. Pat. No. 7,251,687, the disclosure of which isincorporated by reference herein, discloses building a profile of acomputer user based on the websites (network addresses) accessed by thecomputer user and then comparing these network addresses to addresses ina second profile. If there is a strong match, an assumption is made thatthe other accessed addresses in the second profile apply to the computeruser as well. Categorization of the websites is also provided and thecategorization may be in the form of meta tags.

Tran U.S. Patent Application Publication 2007/0208719, the disclosure ofwhich is incorporated by reference herein, discloses intellectualproperty document management wherein search results over a networkrelating to an intellectual property interest are provided to a userbased on an associated user profile and documents are identified asthose having a tag (meta tag or user-generated tag) responsive to theintellectual property interest.

Bennett U.S. Patent Application Publication 2007/0078958, the disclosureof which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses characterizing awebsite by the use of tags and then intelligently predicting a profileof user traffic at the website.

Tee et al. U.S. Patent Application Publication 2006/0020646, thedisclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses themanagement of data over a network that provides an intelligent filesystem that uses user profiles, policies and meta-data to manipulate thestorage of information.

Chalong U.S. Patent Application Publication 2003/0014274, the disclosureof which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses the use of auser profile to perform searching requests in accordance with profiletags that are generated to locate user preference information within thesearch.

However, there remains the need to have a richer experience from socialnetworking websites and other websites related thereto.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The various advantages and purposes of the present invention asdescribed above and hereafter are achieved by providing, according to afirst aspect of the invention, a method of presenting websites to acomputer user, the method comprising the steps of:

obtaining a profile of a computer user that contains meta tagsdescriptive of the participants of a first social networking website;

selecting a second social networking website having meta tags;

selecting a profile from the second social networking website;

comparing the meta tags of the computer user profile with the meta tagsof the profile from the second social networking website to determine atleast one match between the meta tags of the computer user profile andthe meta tags of the profile from the second social networking website;

searching for related websites having at least one meta tag that matchesthe at least one matched meta tag of the profile from the second socialnetworking website; and

presenting a list of the related websites to the computer user.

According to a second aspect of the invention, there is provided acomputer readable storage medium storing instructions that, whenexecuted by a computer, causes the computer to perform a method ofpresenting websites to a computer user, the method comprising the stepsof:

obtaining a profile of a computer user that contains meta tagsdescriptive of the participants of a first social networking website;

selecting a second social networking website having meta tags;

selecting a profile from the second social networking website;

comparing the meta tags of the computer user profile with the meta tagsof the profile from the second social networking website to determine atleast one match between the meta tags of the computer user profile andthe meta tags of the profile from the second social networking website;

searching for related websites having at least one meta tag that matchesthe at least one matched meta tag of the profile from the second socialnetworking website; and

presenting a list of the related websites to the computer user.

According to a third aspect of the invention, there is provided acomputer program product comprising:

a computer usable medium having computer readable program code meansembodied therein for a website presenting method, the computer readableprogram code means in the computer program product comprising:

computer readable program code means for causing a computer to obtain aprofile of a computer user that contains meta tags descriptive of theparticipants of a first social networking website;

computer readable program code means for causing a computer to select asecond social networking website having meta tags;

computer readable program code means for causing a computer to select aprofile from the second social networking website;

computer readable program code means for causing a computer to comparethe meta tags of the computer user profile with the meta tags of theprofile from the second social networking website to determine at leastone match between the meta tags of the computer user profile and themeta tags of the profile from the second social networking website;

computer readable program code means for causing a computer to searchfor related websites having at least one meta tag that matches the atleast one matched meta tag of the profile from the second socialnetworking website; and

computer readable program code means for causing a computer to present alist of the related websites to the computer user.

According to a fourth aspect of the invention, there is provided amethod for a website presenting service the method comprising the stepsof:

obtaining a profile of a computer user that contains meta tagsdescriptive of the participants of a first social networking website;

selecting a second social networking website having meta tags;

selecting a profile from the second social networking website;

comparing the meta tags of the computer user profile with the meta tagsof the profile from the second social networking website to determine atleast one match between the meta tags of the computer user profile andthe meta tags of the profile from the second social networking website;

searching for related websites having at least one meta tag that matchesthe at least one matched meta tag of the profile from the second socialnetworking website; and

presenting a list of the related websites to the computer user.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The features of the invention believed to be novel and the elementscharacteristic of the invention are set forth with particularity in theappended claims. The Figures are for illustration purposes only and arenot drawn to scale. The invention itself, however, both as toorganization and method of operation, may best be understood byreference to the detailed description which follows taken in conjunctionwith the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1 is a flow chart of the overall process according to the presentinvention.

FIG. 2 is a flow chart in more detail of the first step of the processaccording to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart in more detail of the last step of the processaccording to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram that illustrates one exemplary hardwareenvironment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The program environment in which a present embodiment of the inventionis executed illustratively incorporates a general-purpose computer or aspecial purpose device such as a hand-held computer. FIG. 4 is a blockdiagram that illustrates one exemplary hardware environment of thepresent invention. The present invention is typically implemented usinga computer system 56 comprising computer 50 comprised of microprocessormeans, random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM) and othercomponents. The computer may be a personal computer, mainframe computeror other computing device. Resident in the computer 50, or peripheral toit, will be a storage device 54 of some type such as a hard disk drive,floppy disk drive, CD-ROM drive, tape drive or other storage device.

Generally speaking, the software implementation of the presentinvention, program 52 in FIG. 4, is tangibly embodied in acomputer-readable medium such as one of the storage devices 54 mentionedabove. The program 52 comprises instructions which, when read andexecuted by the microprocessor of the computer 50 causes the computer 50to perform the steps necessary to execute the steps or elements of thepresent invention.

It should also be understood that the techniques of the presentinvention may be implemented using a variety of technologies. Forexample, the methods described herein may be implemented in softwareexecuting on a computer system, or implemented in hardware utilizingeither a combination of microprocessors or other specially designedapplication specific integrated circuits, programmable logic devices, orvarious combinations thereof. In particular, the methods describedherein may be implemented by a series of computer-executableinstructions residing on a suitable computer-readable medium. Suitablecomputer-readable media may include volatile (e.g., RAM) and/ornon-volatile (e.g., ROM, disk) memory, carrier waves and transmissionmedia (e.g., copper wire, coaxial cable, fiber optic media). Exemplarycarrier waves may take the form of electrical, electromagnetic oroptical signals conveying digital data streams along a local network, apublicly accessible network such as the Internet or some othercommunication link.

The present inventors propose a method of selecting related websitesbased on intelligent parsing of the websites. The present invention usesprofiles linked to social networking websites that are meta tag based.The related websites may be social networking communities or could bewebsites that have nothing to do with social networking. The selectionof the related websites will be made according to a profile selectedfrom a plurality of profiles at a social networking website. Eachprofile will have descriptive meta tags that are based on the meta tagsused on social networking community websites.

An objective of the present invention is to find persons having similarinterests as the computer user and then retrieve websites that thosepersons have visited in an effort to present more websites of interestto the computer user.

Referring to the Figures in more detail, and particularly referring toFIG. 1, there is shown a flow chart illustrating the overall process ofthe present invention. In block 10, the first step of the process isobtaining a profile of a computer user that contains meta tagsdescriptive of the participants of a first social networking website.Recall that social networking websites have information that a computeruser has posted about the computer user and the computer user'sactivities and interests or that others have posted about the computeruser. More details of the first step of the process of obtaining aprofile of a computer user is shown in FIG. 2.

Referring now to FIG. 2, obtaining a profile comprises several stepswhich includes accessing a first social networking website (block 30)followed by collecting a set of meta tags that describe the participantsof the first social networking website (block 32) and then forming aprofile based on the set of meta tags from the first social networkingwebsite. In practice, this process of obtaining a profile for thecomputer user could be done multiple times (as indicated by loop 36) forthe social networking websites that are of interest to the computeruser.

For example, assume that the computer user is interested in sports,particularly baseball and football and the computer user visits asports-related social networking website such as FanNation. A profilewould be built of the computer user using meta tags from the Fan nationwebsite indicating all of the interests that the computer user has inbaseball and football. The computer user may be interested in onlycollege baseball and football or only professional baseball and footballor both. Such attributes would be noted in the computer user's profile.The computer user could build the profile manually or, preferably, anagent could do that for the computer user using the meta tags from theother participants of the FanNation website.

An agent is a program that performs some information gathering orprocessing task in the background. Typically, an agent is given a verysmall and well-defined task. Many companies now sell software thatenables one to configure an agent to search the internet for certaintypes of information. With respect to the present invention, the agentcould be resident on the computer user's computer or could be locatedremotely in another computer system or website.

Referring back to FIG. 1, the next step of the process shown in block 12would be selecting a second social networking website having meta tags.This second social networking website would be another social networkingwebsite that is of interest to the computer user. For example, thecomputer user could build his profile from a social networking websitelike FanNation as indicated above and then the second social networkingwebsite could be a social networking website like Fanspot.

Then, the process continues by selecting a profile from the secondsocial networking website as shown in block 14. The objective here is toselect a profile of another person that has at least some interests incommon with the computer user. That is, a profile of a person havingsimilar interests in baseball and football would be ideal. At this pointin the process however, it is not known if the selected profile of theperson at the second social networking website has any interests incommon with the computer user.

Once the profile from the second social networking website is selectedas indicated in block 14, the next step is comparing the meta tags ofthe computer user profile with the meta tags of the profile from thesecond social networking website to determine at least one match betweenthe meta tags of the computer user profile and the meta tags of theprofile from the second social networking website as indicated by block16.

As indicated in block 18, the result of comparing the meta tags as justdescribed is a match or not. If no match is found, then there are norelated websites of interest to the computer user as indicated in block20. Another profile from the second social networking website could thenbe selected (block 14), compared (block 16) and determined if there ismatch (block 18). The system would continue selecting profiles from thesecond social networking website until at least one match is found orthe computer user stops the process.

If the result in block 18 is that there are matching meta tags, then thenext step is searching for related websites that are of interest to thecomputer user on the internet, as indicated in block 22. The relatedwebsites would have at least one meta tag that matches the meta tags ofthe profile from the second social networking website. In a preferredembodiment, the agent would actually do the searching. In one preferredembodiment, the searching of related websites would look only for thoserelated websites that have meta tags that correspond to the meta tagsmatched in the previous step, block 18.

Different criteria may be used to determine whether a match (block 18)has been made between the meta tags of the profiles. For example, thecriteria can be that a match between meta tags is made when there is atleast one meta tag of the profile from the second social networkingwebsite that matches a meta tag of the computer user profile. This wouldgive the broadest range of searching capability when the relatedwebsites are searched for. However, a large number of websites of lowinterest are apt to be found. Therefore, a better criteria might be tolook for multiple matches between the meta tags of the profile from thesecond social networking website and the meta tags of the computer userprofile. As an example, assume there are 10 meta tags in the computeruser profile. If a match is determined when there is a match of 10 metatags, related websites of high interest are bound to be found but therewill also be a smaller number of related websites likely to be found. Ifa small number of related websites are found, the criteria can bechanged to a lower number of meta tag matches. The point here is thatthe criteria may be varied to suit the likelihood of websites beingfound.

An alternative method of determining a match is to use a weighting orscoring of the meta tags. Assume that the computer user is interested infootball but is more interested in college football and is mostinterested in college football played in the Western United States.Then, those meta tags indicating Western United States college footballwould have the highest weighting and college football in general wouldhave the next highest weighting. So, for example, a match could bedetermined when only the highest weighted meta tags match.

The criteria may be adjusted in one embodiment by the computer user andin another embodiment by the website or system that hosts the agent.

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, as indicated byblock 24, and assuming there are several related websites found aftersearching, the next step in the process may be ordering the list ofrelated websites according to the closest matches to the meta tags ofthe computer user profile. That is, the related websites may be placedin the order of relevance. For example, take our computer user who hasan interest in football and baseball. The computer user may have usedthe criteria in blocks 16, 18 to determine a match when the meta tags ofthe profile from the second social networking website indicate aninterest in football or baseball. There is likely to be quite a fewrelated websites pertaining to football or baseball. The relatedwebsites found could then be ordered according to predetermined criteriasuch as those websites having the largest number of matches or thosewebsites having the highest score or weighting. As an example, therelated websites could be ordered first by professional sports, thencollegiate sports and then high school sports. The criteria selected maybe made by the computer user or remotely by a website or system hostingthe agent.

Again assuming that at least one related website is found, the next stepis presenting a list of the related websites to the computer user asindicated in block 26. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, thelist of related websites would be presented in an ordered manner asindicated above in block 24.

It can be appreciated that if the process according to the presentinvention is followed, a computer user, after building a profile, mayselect a social networking website of interest and then search for anyrelated website that has meta tags common to both the computer user'sprofile and the profile from the selected social networking website.This makes for a very efficient and rich internet searching experience.

In another preferred embodiment of the present invention, the processmay include a further step of learning related websites that are of nointerest, indicated by block 28. It is expected that even with thecommonality between the meta tags of the computer user's profile and themeta tags of the profile from the second social networking website,there may be some related websites found which are of no or littleinterest to the computer user. The reason for this is that meta tags arenonhierarchical and can be prone to impreciseness. Accordingly, it isdesirable to have a way to “weed out” websites of no or little interestbefore presenting the list of related websites to the computer user.

Referring now to FIG. 3, there is described a process of learning thewebsites of no or little interest. The first step is deleting anyrelated websites that are of no or little interest to the computer useras indicated by block 40. The next step is saving the meta tags of thedeleted related websites as indicated by block 42. The last step isusing the saved meta tags as a reference for deleting related websitesbefore presenting them to the computer user as indicated by block 44.The learning process is accomplished by a data mining algorithm thatpersons skilled in the art know how to write and use.

The learning needed to do the weeding out of the websites of no or lowinterest can be summarized in the following way. In one preferredembodiment, a low-interest related website can be manually “marked” bythe computer user. Once the computer user indicates that a relatedwebsite is of no interest, characteristics (key words, other attributes)of that site are extracted. Other websites with similar characteristicsare therefore not sent to this user in the future.

In another preferred embodiment, the related web site of no or lowinterest can be determined automatically. For example, a website is sentto the computer user, but the computer user never goes to that website(based on the name or description of that site). A conclusion is madethat websites of this type are of no or low interest, and websites ofthis type in the future are not sent, or are sent with lower priority.As another example, another related website is sent to the computeruser. The computer user goes to that website, but spends less time thanthe computer user generally spends on other websites that have been sentto the computer user. A conclusion is drawn that this website is of lowinterest. Keywords and other attributes are extracted, and websites ofthis type get a lower interest ranking.

It will be apparent to those skilled in the art having regard to thisdisclosure that other modifications of this invention beyond thoseembodiments specifically described here may be made without departingfrom the spirit of the invention. Accordingly, such modifications areconsidered within the scope of the invention as limited solely by theappended claims.

1. A method of presenting websites to a computer user, the methodcomprising the steps of: obtaining a profile of a computer user thatcontains meta tags descriptive of the participants of a first socialnetworking website; selecting a second social networking website havingmeta tags; selecting a profile from the second social networkingwebsite; comparing the meta tags of the computer user profile with themeta tags of the profile from the second social networking website todetermine at least one match between the meta tags of the computer userprofile and the meta tags of the profile from the second socialnetworking website; searching for related websites having at least onemeta tag that matches the at least one matched meta tag of the profilefrom the second social networking website; and presenting a list of therelated websites to the computer user.
 2. The method of claim 1 whereinthe step of obtaining a profile comprising: accessing the first socialnetworking website; collecting a set of meta tags that describe theparticipants of the first social networking website; and forming aprofile based on the set of meta tags from the first social networkingwebsite.
 3. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps, afterpresenting, of deleting any related websites that are of no interest tothe computer user; saving the meta tags of the deleted related websites;and using the saved meta tags as a reference for deleting relatedwebsites before presenting them to the computer user.
 4. The method ofclaim 1 further comprising the step of ordering the list of relatedwebsites in a particular order according to predetermined criteria. 5.The method of claim 4 wherein the meta tags of each related website arescored according to a predetermined criteria and the list of relatedwebsites are ordered according to a range of a strongest match to aweakest match.
 6. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of comparingcomprises determining a predetermined number of meta tags in commonbetween the meta tags of the computer user profile and the meta tags ofthe profile of the second social networking website.
 7. The method ofclaim 1 wherein the step of comparing comprises scoring the meta tags ofthe computer user profile according to a predetermined criteria anddetermining a match of those meta tags of the computer user profilehaving the highest score.
 8. The method of claim 1 wherein in the stepof comparing, there is not at least one match between the meta tags ofthe computer user profile and the meta tags of the profile of the secondsocial networking, then further comprising the step of selecting anotherprofile from the second social networking website.
 9. The method ofclaim 8 further comprising the step of selecting another profile fromthe second social networking website until there is at least one matchin the step of comparing.
 10. A computer readable storage medium storinginstructions that, when executed by a computer, causes the computer toperform a method of presenting websites to a computer user, the methodcomprising the steps of: obtaining a profile of a computer user thatcontains meta tags descriptive of the participants of a first socialnetworking website; selecting a second social networking website havingmeta tags; selecting a profile from the second social networkingwebsite; comparing the meta tags of the computer user profile with themeta tags of the profile from the second social networking website todetermine at least one match between the meta tags of the computer userprofile and the meta tags of the profile from the second socialnetworking website; searching for related websites having at least onemeta tag that matches the at least one matched meta tag of the profilefrom the second social networking website; and presenting a list of therelated websites to the computer user.
 11. The computer readable storagemedium of claim 10 wherein the step of obtaining a profile comprising:accessing the first social networking website; collecting a set of metatags that describe the participants of the first social networkingwebsite; and forming a profile based on the set of meta tags from thefirst social networking website.
 12. The computer readable storagemedium of claim 10 further comprising the steps, after presenting, ofdeleting any related websites that are of no interest to the computeruser; saving the meta tags of the deleted related websites; and usingthe saved meta tags as a reference for deleting related websites beforepresenting them to the computer user.
 13. The computer readable storagemedium of claim 10 further comprising the step of selecting anotherprofile from the second social networking website until there is atleast one match in the step of comparing.
 14. A computer program productcomprising: a computer usable medium having computer readable programcode means embodied therein for a website presenting method, thecomputer readable program code means in the computer program productcomprising: computer readable program code means for causing a computerto obtain a profile of a computer user that contains meta tagsdescriptive of the participants of a first social networking website;computer readable program code means for causing a computer to select asecond social networking website having meta tags; computer readableprogram code means for causing a computer to select a profile from thesecond social networking website; computer readable program code meansfor causing a computer to compare the meta tags of the computer userprofile with the meta tags of the profile from the second socialnetworking website to determine at least one match between the meta tagsof the computer user profile and the meta tags of the profile from thesecond social networking website; computer readable program code meansfor causing a computer to search for related websites having at leastone meta tag that matches the at least one matched meta tag of theprofile from the second social networking website; and computer readableprogram code means for causing a computer to present a list of therelated websites to the computer user.
 15. The computer program productof claim 14 wherein the computer readable program code means for causinga computer to obtain a profile comprising: computer readable programcode means for causing a computer to access the first social networkingwebsite; computer readable program code means for causing a computer tocollect a set of meta tags that describe the participants of the firstsocial networking website; and computer readable program code means forcausing a computer to form a profile based on the set of meta tags fromthe first social networking website.
 16. The computer program product ofclaim 14 further comprising, after computer readable program code meansfor causing a computer to present, computer readable program code meansfor causing a computer to delete any related websites that are of nointerest to the computer user; computer readable program code means forcausing a computer to save the meta tags of the deleted relatedwebsites; and computer readable program code means for causing acomputer to use the saved meta tags as a reference for deleting relatedwebsites before presenting them to the computer user.
 17. The computerprogram product of claim 14 further comprising computer readable programcode means for causing a computer to select another profile from thesecond social networking website until there is at least one match inthe computer readable program code means for causing a computer tocompare.
 18. A method for a website presenting service the methodcomprising the steps of: obtaining a profile of a computer user thatcontains meta tags descriptive of the participants of a first socialnetworking website; selecting a second social networking website havingmeta tags; selecting a profile from the second social networkingwebsite; comparing the meta tags of the computer user profile with themeta tags of the profile from the second social networking website todetermine at least one match between the meta tags of the computer userprofile and the meta tags of the profile from the second socialnetworking website; searching for related websites having at least onemeta tag that matches the at least one matched meta tag of the profilefrom the second social networking website; and presenting a list of therelated websites to the computer user.
 19. The method of claim 18wherein the step of obtaining a profile comprising: accessing the firstsocial networking website; collecting a set of meta tags that describethe participants of the first social networking website; and forming aprofile based on the set of meta tags from the first social networkingwebsite.
 20. The method of claim 18 further comprising the steps, afterpresenting, of deleting any related websites that are of no interest tothe computer user; saving the meta tags of the deleted related websites;and using the saved meta tags as a reference for deleting relatedwebsites before presenting them to the computer user.